The Bolen house was set well back from the road behind a stand of trees. It was quite large compared to others in the neighbourhood, but very plain, functional, almost utilitarian, and Paget wondered if it was a reflection of Jim Bolen himself. Two cars were parked near the front door, and Paget pulled in beside them. One was a white, top-of-the-range VW Passat, complete with sun-roof and all the bells and whistles, while the other was a red low-slung MG with a dogeared Paddington bear hanging from the rear-view mirror.
He mounted the shallow steps and rang the bell.
The door was opened immediately by a young woman wearing a faded blue shirt and form-fitting jeans. She was tall and slim, and had predatory eyes.
“Saw you coming up the drive,” she said, her gaze frankly appraising. “You must be the policeman. John said he’d asked you to come.”
He introduced himself. “And you are Miss Bolen?”
“That’s right.” Prudence Bolen opened the door wider. “I’ll tell John you’re here,” she said, and left him standing in the entrance hall as she disappeared toward the back of the house.
Moments later a young, bespectacled, bookish-looking man, but obviously a Bolen, appeared. He hurried forward, hand outstretched. “Chief Inspector Paget? John Bolen,” he said. His handshake was brisk and firm. “I must apologize for my sister; I did ask her to show you through, but I don’t think she listens to half the things I say. Please, come with me.”
John Bolen led the way to a large, well-appointed office at the back of the house. Paget paused to look out of the French window at the manicured lawn almost completely surrounded by a box hedge and a variety of trees. A white-painted gazebo marked the far end of the garden, and sunlight shimmered on the surface of a small pond beside it.
“Very nice,” Paget observed, more to himself than to Bolen, but the man picked up on the comment immediately.
“We can talk in the garden if you wish,” he suggested. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been penned up in here most of day, and I could do with some fresh air.” Without waiting for an answer, he opened the doors and stepped out.
The sun was bright, but there was a hint of autumn in the air, and the grass was still wet from the morning dew in the shadow of the trees. “Sorry to drag you all the way out here,” he apologized. “Ordinarily, I would have come to you, but my mother wanted me here. She asked me to go through my father’s papers to make sure that there was nothing outstanding. Harry—that is my Uncle Harry, whom I believe you met yesterday—intended to be here as well, but Aunt Dee is flying into Manchester this afternoon, and he’s gone to meet her.”
“No problem,” Paget told him, falling into step beside Bolen. “You mentioned on the phone that there was a matter you wished to discuss?”
“Yes. Well, to be truthful, it was my mother’s idea to ring you.
She feels …” John Bolen spread his hands and sighed. Clearly Bolen was not entirely in agreement with his mother on the matter. “She feels that she wasn’t quite frank with you yesterday morning, and there are certain things you should know about my father if you are to find the person responsible for his death.”
He hesitated before going on, making it clear that he was uncomfortable with what he’d been asked to do.
“You see, for some time, now, he and my mother have been what you might call estranged. They’ve been living in the same house but more or less separate lives, if you see what I mean.”
Paget frowned. “I’m not sure that I do,” he said.
Bolen clasped his hands behind him and walked with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground. “Look, Chief Inspector,” he said stiffly, “I’d rather not be telling you this at all. I know my father had his faults, but … Well, the point is, my mother seems to think that it may help you with your investigation into his death. You see, Dad sometimes went with other women. I mean, well, you know …”
Paget took pity on him. “Prostitutes,” he said matter-of-factly. “If you are trying to tell me that your father was in the habit of staying at the Tudor Hotel most weekends for that purpose, Mr. Bolen, I should tell you that we have come to much the same conclusion.”
“Ah!” The man looked both surprised and relieved, but only momentarily. A furrow of concern creased his brow. “Do you mean to tell me it was common knowledge?” he asked in hushed tones.
Paget nodded. “Within certain circles, yes, I believe it was.”
“I see.” John Bolen looked deflated. “Then perhaps I’ve just been wasting your time, Chief Inspector. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” said Paget, “because there are a number of questions I would like to ask you, if you don’t mind.”
“Please, go ahead. If there is any way I can help, feel free to ask anything you like.”
“Thank you. To begin with, I would like to know more about this project at Ockrington. I’ve been led to believe that if your father
had gone ahead with it as he planned to do, it could have had devastating consequences for Bolen Brothers. Is that true?”
Bolen looked puzzled. “I’m not at all sure that I see the connection,” he said. “With my father’s death, I mean. From what my mother told me, I was under the impression it was more like a random act of violence.”
“Oh, I’m not saying we’ve ruled that out,” Paget assured him, “but it seems there were a number of people opposed to the course he was taking, a lot of people who tried to talk him out of it, so it has to be considered as a possible motive for his murder.”
Bolen flinched at the word murder, and it was clear that the idea of being included among the suspects did not sit well with him. He fell silent, and Paget had to ask the question again.
“Yes, well, to be honest, we’d have been lucky to last a year with that millstone around our neck,” said John. “My father has mortgaged this house, the building in Broadminster, and other properties as well. The combined payments on those mortgages alone will impact heavily on our ability to carry on our day-to-day business. So the sooner we can get out from under those debts, the better.”
“What, exactly, is your position in the company, Mr. Bolen?”
“Cost accountant. Actually, I spend most of my time doing cost analysis and projections, and frankly I was appalled at what my father was about to do. God knows how many hours I spent working up charts and graphs to try to convince him that Ockrington was a bad investment. The M.o.D. has put far too many conditions on the sale for it to be viable, but he wouldn’t listen.” Bolen smiled ruefully. “Ask my fiancée. She’ll tell you how much time I’ve spent in the office these past few weeks.
“Mind you,” he continued, “it was always difficult working with him when we were bidding directly against Lambert. I would spend weeks, sometimes months, costing out large jobs, and I’d cut it as fine as I dared, because I knew Dad would accept nothing less. And then he would come along at the last moment and cut it further.
“At first, I made the mistake of arguing with him. I told him we couldn’t possibly make a profit if we used his figures. But he was adamant, and I finally realized that it wouldn’t matter what I or anyone else said, so I learned to live with it. We made money on other jobs, but we barely scraped by on some of the big ones. If Dad had only …” He lifted his hands and let them fall again. “But that’s water under the bridge,” he said firmly. “It makes no difference now.”
“Do you have any idea how he arrived at the figures he told you to submit instead of your own?”
“No. And he would never explain. Sometimes they would be just a couple of thousand under, but in some cases it could be as much as twenty or thirty thousand.”
“Did you always win the contract based on your father’s figures?”
John Bolen’s sudden laugh sounded harsh in the tranquil garden. “Clients jumped at it,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they? They were getting a bargain.”
He paused at the edge of the pond, then turned and began to walk back toward the house. He walked, thought Paget, at the sedate pace of a much older man, hands clasped behind his back, eyes on the ground as if in deep thought.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “that was the last thing we talked about when I went up to his room in the hotel on Saturday evening. I thought I would give it one last try before the meeting on Monday, but he refused to listen. Kept insisting it could be done.”
“You went to see him Saturday evening?” said Paget sharply.
Bolen nodded. “I did indeed. He’d just come up from dinner; in fact, I arrived just as he was letting himself in.”
“What time was that?”
Bolen thought. “Shortly after nine. Say ten past.”
“Was anyone with him?”
Bolen looked puzzled. “No. Why?”
“Did you see anyone you knew while you were there?”
“No.”
“How long were you with your father?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes at the most. Not that it did any good. He became quite belligerent. Kept telling me to get out, said that he’d made up his mind, and that was that. I tried, believe me, Chief Inspector, I really tried, but I had to throw in the towel in the end. There was simply no point in talking to him when he was like that, so I gave up and left.”
“Did anyone see you leave?”
“I stopped at the desk. After almost shoving me out of the door, Dad told me to stop and tell them he wanted to be called at seven-thirty the following morning, and I was to tell them they’d better not forget!” A faint smile hovered around John Bolen’s mouth. “I relayed the message as it was given to me to the woman at the desk, and I remember she smiled and assured me it would be taken care of. She had obviously dealt with my father before.”
“Where did you go when you left the hotel?”
“Home. Well, that’s not strictly true. I didn’t go straight home. I drove out onto Riverview Road and parked the car overlooking the bridge and just sat there trying to decide what to do next. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do, so I went home and tried my best to stop worrying about it. Of course, I couldn’t.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Ten-fifteen, ten-thirty. I’m afraid I can’t be more precise.”
“What was your father doing when you left him?”
“Muttering a lot. He had his papers spread out on the table, and he was upset about something. He wasn’t listening to me, and finally he told me to get out because he had a phone call to make. I was pretty angry myself by that time, so I asked him what was so damned important about a phone call that he couldn’t listen to me. But all he kept saying was, “He’s given me the wrong figures. The bastard’s given me the wrong figures!” That’s when I gave up and left him to it.”
A shadow crossed John Bolen’s face. “And that’s the last time I saw my father alive,” he ended quietly.
Paget waited a moment before asking the next question. “Do you have any idea who he was talking about?”
“No. Why? Do you think it might be important?”
Paget side-stepped the question. “Just one more question, Mr. Bolen, if you don’t mind, and then I shall leave you alone. Are you familiar with the terms of your father’s will? And if so, would you mind telling me who is the main beneficiary?”
John Bolen’s face darkened as he turned to face Paget squarely. “I’m not sure I like the implication of that question,” he said harshly.
“There is no implication, Mr. Bolen,” Paget told him. “It is simply a question that must be asked in a case such as this. If I don’t ask it, someone else will.”
John’s expression didn’t change as he considered Paget’s answer. “My mother,” he said curtly. “Not that it has any relevance in this case, but my mother will inherit everything.”
The MG was gone when Paget left the house. He was in a thoughtful mood as he drove back into town. The evidence suggested that Jim Bolen had died as a result of a fight with a prostitute, and he was probably wasting his time looking in other directions for a motive. But he couldn’t escape the thought that the timing of Bolen’s death was extremely fortuitous for a number of people, not the least of whom was Bolen’s wife.
Laura Bolen had been assaulted by her husband and thrown out of her own house. No matter how separate their lives might have been up to that point, they had maintained the façade of a united family, and she must have felt utterly humiliated.
Harry Bolen had flown back from Canada in a desperate last-ditch attempt to persuade his brother to drop the project, because he had a lot to lose if Bolen Brothers failed. As did John. But then, so did Keith Lambert if Bolen should be successful in his bid. His business had to be suffering for him to have approached Laura as he
had. In effect, he was admitting that Bolen was winning, and that must have been hard for him to swallow.
Still deep in thought, he passed the entrance to a narrow lane when a flash of red caught his eye. He glanced round just in time to see a red MG and a truck parked side by side. Their drivers stood between the two vehicles, heads together, arms around each other. He’d never seen the man before, but in the split second before they disappeared from view, he recognized the girl.